


Owe You One

by futureboy (PokeRowan)



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Blow Jobs, Fake AH Crew, Hand Jobs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-12 08:38:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11158224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PokeRowan/pseuds/futureboy
Summary: “Why did you do that?”“Because the LSPD are stupid, and I don’t wanna be saddled with your mail for the rest of my life.”Jeremy has a weird neighbour who’s never around to pick up his goddamn parcels. He’s lucky he’s so hot.





	1. Setup

**Author's Note:**

> [RPF disclaimer: Written according to guidelines set by RT employees (to the best of my knowledge). This is a fictional series of events using characters inspired by real people.]
> 
> Shitty Neighbour!AU. Prompt taken from [here](http://fanficy-au.tumblr.com/post/122898129154/some-shitty-neighbour-aus). Beta-d by [wildcardluck](http://wildcardluck.tumblr.com/) on tumblr (thank you!!!)
> 
> As ever, my apologies for the British English spellings.  
> [Revised 18-12-17]

The rent is much cheaper here purely because the area’s crime rate is so much higher, but honestly? With all the stick-ups at work per week, it’s not a huge change to his evening regime.

“Good luck,” his new landlord had said, tossing him the key to his new apartment on move-in day. He was on the fourth floor of six; there was a bed, kitchen appliances, and a couch, and it was ten minutes from the pizza joint he had a delivery gig at instead of thirty minutes. Even better – significantly less damp behind the sink. And _best –_ no more crappy roommates.

A couple more guns was _not_ gonna make a difference to Jeremy’s already shitty lifestyle.

Shifting his shit into B4-31 doesn’t take too long. It’s mostly workout stuff he hasn’t got the heart to sell, and the few sets of clothes he owns. A couple books, some kitchenware, a set of starchy bedsheets.

He’s not expecting to meet his neighbours, and frankly, he doesn’t care to. Jeremy can do without awkward encounters with drug-addled junkies, and the flip-side of the kind of folk who sell drugs to drug-addled junkies. He spots a used syringe in the corner of the elevator whilst he’s moving his last bag of linens in and _really_ hopes that there aren’t any kids living in this place.

Surprisingly, it takes a week for the first jarring event to take place.

Jeremy’s gone down to check his mail in the lobby, when he notices a mail carrier looking annoyed through the glass doors. She’s holding an enormous box in one arm, and looks like she’s buckling with the strain of it.

He pushes the release catch. “You okay there, pal?” he asks her.

“Yeah,” the mail carrier says, holding down the buzzer on the apartment list, “I just can’t get through to this address and I have a parcel for them.”

She’s jabbing at the button labelled _B4-32_.

“Oh, hey,” he says, “I’ll take it if you like, I’m B4-31.”

“Really? That would make my life so much easier.”

“It’s not like you can leave it under the mat,” he points out. “Or in those tiny mailboxes. I’ll just give it to them upstairs.”

“You’re a doll,” she sighs, and he signs for it. “Thanks so much.”

“No worries,” Jeremy says. He’s already swearing at himself on the inside. It wasn’t really his problem, but he _could_ help, and…

Damnit. Guess it was time to meet the neighbours.

He heads back up in the elevator, holding someone else’s package and precisely zero letters addressed to himself, and approaches B4-32.

“Hello?”

He calls through the door when his knocks go answered. Huh. Guess there really wasn’t anyone in.

Jeremy spends the morning working out, browsing the internet on his crappy laptop, and practising his sketching. If he could start to make a couple bucks on the side with that… Well, it’d at least help him out a little. He’s halfway through a still life exercise after lunch when he hears 32’s front door bang shut.

Jeremy leaps to his feet and grabs the box by his own door, heading out into the hall. There’s no name on the address, and therefore no indication whatsoever of who this person might be. Who knows? The unexpected can be interesting.

Three knocks in quick succession, like he always does. He really hopes his neighbour’s in, because he doesn’t wanna be saddled with this fuckin’ box.

The light from under the door is blocked - someone’s looking through the peephole. “Hey,” he calls out, “I’m from next door, you weren’t in earlier so I signed for a package for you--”

He fully expects the door to crack open, still on the chain, like pretty much every customer he delivers pizza to. It does not. It’s pulled wide open, to reveal a six-foot-something heartthrob with long, loose, black hair and features which wouldn’t be out of place on a Roman marble bust.

Oh, _no_.

“Hi,” he breathes.

“Hey,” says the man, looking suitably befuddled.

“I’m Jeremy, I just moved into the apartment next door,” Jeremy says, trying not to stare at the man’s arms, wrapped in a tight black t-shirt that did him a lot of favours. C’mon, Dooley. Don’t be such a useless gay.

“Ryan,” the man says slowly.

“Here’s your mail. You’ve ordered some _super_ heavy stuff, dude.”

Ryan takes the box from his outstretched arms and nods politely: “thanks. I owe you one.”

“Ah, it’s no trouble,” Jeremy says awkwardly, because _fuck_ , the man’s got a seriously low, beautiful voice, and it’s doing things to him. “Just glad I caught you before work. Nice to meet you, pal.”

“Nice to meet you too, Jeremy. Have a good shift,” Ryan says.

Jeremy’s already halfway back into his own apartment before he hears Ryan’s door finally click shut.

Oh, no. _No_ , no no no. No more meeting neighbours. No more picking up mail. This is definitely the dumbest decision Jeremy’s made all week, and yes, that included accidentally leaving his bike outside for anyone to steal the other evening, which could have been truly terrible.

He heads to work that afternoon, and tries his best to focus on the traffic instead of the dark-haired, smokin’ hot guy he apparently shares a building with.

‘A Pizza My Mind’ is a pretty good place to work, all things considered, because not only does Jeremy have an excuse to answer the phone with the worst puns he can think of, they also have corporate guidelines in the event of a stickup. It’s a lot easier to put cash into a bag and have a gun thrust into your general face area when there’s steps to follow.

“Hey, Jeremy.”

“Hi, Matt. You want me on calls?”

His manager grins. “Yeah, we’ve only had a few people eating in tonight so far, so no deliveries yet. Just man the phone until we get something in.”

“Will do.”

He takes a couple of calls, watches Trevor do his thing with the pizza dough in the kitchen, and heads out for some deliveries. Man, Los Santos is a real shithole when you get just past the downtown area. The tips are light in his pocket, but at least he got some tips.

He returns to the restaurant halfway through his rounds to pick up some more deliveries. As soon as he parks his bike up, though…

He knows something’s not quite right.

Slowly, and very, very quietly, he makes his way inside the building. Matt’s standing at the register, trying not to look bored as he packs bills into a bag – some scrawny kid wearing a balaclava is pointing a gun-shaped paper bag at the front desk, shaking and screeching. The only customers in the place, a couple in the corner, are cowering under the table.

It’s immediately obvious what’s going on, so Jeremy creeps up behind the guy and taps him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me?”

The kid whirls around, flailing his gun wildly, eyes all frantic and searching. He’s full of antsy rage and a lust for cash.

Jeremy doesn’t wait for a response. As soon as the heat’s off Matt, he punches him square in the face.

“Fucking _hell_ , Jeremy!” Matt shouts, as their robber goes down like a sack of shit.

Jeremy walks up to the counter and shakes off his knuckles: “are these ready to go out?” he asks Trevor, who’s emerged from the back and is staring at him in shock.

“Y… yeah.”

“Jeremy!” Matt shouts again, “what the fuck did you do that for? You’re an idiot! You could have been killed!”

“Oh, come on, Matt, it’s not a real gun,” he says exasperatedly, collecting the pizza boxes from beside the register. “You can put the cash back now.”

“How could you _possibly_ know that?!”

“Calm down,” he says, rolling his eyes. Stepping over the unconscious robber, he reaches for the gun shaped paper bag, and tears it open to reveal… a water gun.

“Jesus Christ,” Matt mutters.

“If you’ve got a real gun, then _showing_ it scares people more than hiding it,” he points out. “Plus, he’s robbing the store at nine at night, when we don’t close til one, so he’s obviously an idiot who’s never done this before. There’s more cash at the end of the shift. Treyco, can you call the cops on this fuckin’ moron?”

“You got it,” says Trevor, darting out into the open to use the phone.

“And that’s the other thing,” Jeremy adds, before he pushes open the glass doors, “he’s clearly not a professional, wearing something like that. You don’t wear a mask in that line of work unless you’ve got somewhere else to be.”

As he heads back to secure the pizzas in his bike compartment, he swears he hears Trevor say something along the lines of: “Jeremy scares me _so_ bad sometimes.”

 

* * *

 

The speakerphone by his front door buzzes one morning.

“Hello?”

“I’ve got a package for a ‘Jeremy Dooley’?”

“That’s me,” he says, recalling the cheap sketching pencils he’d decided to treat himself to. “I’ll be right down.”

When he steps out of the elevator and into the lobby, he sees the same frustrated mail worker poking the button for Ryan’s apartment.

“Hey,” he says, hitting the door release, “still no luck with 32?”

“Nope,” she says irritably. “It’s been like this for a few months now, they’re just never in.”

“I’ll take it again,” he accidentally says, like an idiot.

“Oh, brilliant!” she says, perking up, “that would save me a redelivery! I have your Amazon parcel, too, Mr. Dooley, here--”

He signs the e-signature pad. “It’s Jeremy... And don’t worry about it, it must be, like, an early morning shift arrangement or something. I barely hear a sound from the place.”

“Well, thanks again, Jeremy. You have a great day, now.”

Rats. Another box. Jeremy’s a fuckin’ _tool_ sometimes.

It’s way past midnight when he hears noises from next door again. He briefly contemplates the fact that it’s quite late, and that he’s already in pyjama pants, but ultimately Ryan _must_ already be awake. How rude could it be?

Jeremy lugs the box into the corridor. “Hey, Ryan? You got a parcel again,” he calls out. “Sorry it’s so late--”

There’s a bumping sound from inside the apartment.

“Uh--”

“I can leave it here if you like?” Jeremy offers, unnerved.

“That’d be great,” Ryan shouts back. “I had… kinda... a _situation_ at work and I look like a mess right now.”

“I’m sure you look fine,” he replies, before he can stop himself. “You have a great night, buddy.”

And then he returns to his apartment and hits his head against the wall connecting him to B4-30. _You look fine?_ Dumbass Dooley, entering stage left and giving the performance of a lifetime. What a fuckin’ _moron._

There’s a lot of knocking about and rattling from next door that evening, right into the early hours. It’s not the best way to spend his night off, but he manages to drown it out with sketching and some quiet music. He tries to drown out thoughts of Ryan’s ‘situation’, too, but his head gets flooded with questions and it doesn’t work out.

What job did he do? What kind of situation could he have gotten into?

Maybe he was a security guard. Dude was built enough.

He could just as easily be a model, though, with a face like that. Even that crooked nose gave him character. It was very charming.

Whilst he clears up his drawings and gets ready to go to sleep, he opens up a news broadcast on his laptop. Immediately, it looks like something big’s occurred in Downtown Los Santos tonight.

“…our correspondent reporting that the Penris Building was on lockdown for several hours after the heist had taken place, by which point the gang members had made their escape…”

“Damn,” Jeremy says, through a mouthful of toothpaste. He watches the footage intently – he recognised those blurry faces from the recovered CCTV tapes. That was Kingpin and Mogar from the Fake AH Crew. Christ, that must have been a break-in and a half.

“…it’s currently undetermined how much data was breached, and what exactly the gang’s primary target was…”

“I’ll fuckin’ say.”

Jeremy spits and rinses. Those guys did _everything_. It was like they’d tried every type of heist under the sun, just for the hell of it. There was almost something admirable in it.

It certainly distracted him from his hot neighbour, in any case.

 

* * *

 

After work one night, he and Matt close up and hit The Bay Bar to unwind. Legion Square is actually quite pretty in the early hours, despite the rampant drunkenness and shady characters. If Jeremy were to avoid places simply because of that, though, he’d just about have Mount Chiliad to visit, and Mount Chiliad alone.

“I just don’t understand why you of all people are working in this shitty joint,” Matt says. “You’re a quick learner, you know the basics of basically every skill I can think of, and if you _don’t_ , it’s not hard to teach you. Remember when Trevor showed you how to do the pizza dough properly? You were a pro!”

“It’s money,” Jeremy says, swigging from his bottle, “it’s always money, dude. I’m lucky I can still afford rent.”

Matt shakes his head in disbelief. “That’s crazy. I wish I had the power to give you a damn raise.”

“It’s okay, really. I’m doing fine right now.”

“Still doesn’t seem fair. You’d fuckin’ thrive in a college environment, you’ve got so much potential.”

Jeremy shrugs and picks at the label of his drink. He gets uncomfortable when people bring this up, and especially when Matt or Trevor bring this up, because honestly? He’s not sure he is, or was ever, good enough for college. Sure, learning’s great and all. But he can’t utilise the skills he’s got right now in an effective way, let alone market any new, shiny, _expensive_ ones.

“I’m doing just fine,” he repeats, and the bar grows quiet.

Well, fuck. That’s unsettling.

He peers over his shoulder, and Matt mirrors him. Two men have made their presences known in the entranceway. One has immaculately groomed stubble, gold-rimmed shades, and a shit-eating smirk; the other has an absolutely terrifying black skull mask on.

Jeremy feels his heart stop.

It’s two of the Fakes. There’s no telling what they’re here for, but he’s not keen on being a bystander or a hostage.

The Golden Boy surveys the room with disinterest – clearly no one here is what they came to see – and it’s impossible to tell where Vagabond’s eyes are landing, but he leans down to say something to his counterpart.

The shit-eating smirk widens.

“Hey! Pintsize!”

Matt discreetly punches him in the arm with fear, because, holy shit, Jeremy’s the smallest dude in the bar and his feet don’t touch the ground from his chair. He spares his manager an annoyed glance and tries to keep a level head.

“Yeah, I’m talking to you, bitesize,” the Golden Boy calls, approaching the bar. All eyes are on him: “come on, guys, don’t let me and Vagabond interrupt you all. Keep talking.”

The patrons restart their conversations hastily, because who the fuck wants to get on the wrong side of the wildcard of the Fakes?

The Golden Boy reaches him, and leans down to mutter in Jeremy’s ear. That British accent gets him bristling. “My friend ‘ere,” he says, jabbing a finger at Vagabond, “reckons you should clear off. Our Leading Lady quite likes the way you deliver pizza, y’see…”

There’s a moment where Matt looks at him, and Jeremy just _knows_ he’s thinking about how Jack Pattillo likes their joint’s pizza, instead of _shit, we’re about to get_ _really_ _lucky and run away_.

“Thanks,” he says. He looks the fucking horrifying skull right in its hollow sockets, and nods.

Vagabond nods politely back.

All the hairs on Jeremy’s arms stand up on end, so he decides that it’s time to hightail it outta there. Grabbing Matt by the arm, he yanks him out of the bar: “we’re not going in there for at least a month,” he says firmly, “or at least until we know what they were doing in there was safer than a hit.”

“Than a _hit_?” Matt says, in a very strained voice, “I never wanna go in there again. Fucking _hell_.”

Jeremy makes a discontented noise, and suggests that maybe they should head home. He’s almost hesitant to part ways, but Matt lives on the other side of Los Santos, so it’s not as though they can walk each other back in the dark.

Later, in his room, he wonders what Vagabond’s facial expression had looked like when he recalled the pizza delivery boy’s appearance, and has a hysterical little laughing fit. This was _surreal_. Spared because he gave them food. What a fuckin’ thought that was. He must have delivered to one of the strange customers who leave their payment in the mailbox out front and tell him to drop the pizza on the porch.

That usually suits him fine, because it’s less talking and more time for tips, but…

Oh, god, he’s been to a Fake AH Crew safehouse before. That’s crazy.

Jeremy’s restless that night, trying to recall every interaction he’d had with the unseen pizza patrons; every regular location, every name that popped up bi-monthly. To his frustration – and somewhat to his relief – he fails to come up with a single one that’s viable.


	2. Execution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut here. You were warned. B)

The delivery situation is getting ridiculous.

Not only does the mail carrier know him by name now, but whenever she can’t get through to 32, she buzzes 31 instead. Jeremy hasn’t got the heart to tell the woman that he technically works the night shift, and that every time she calls his room, she shaves an hour off his sleeping schedule. So it is what it is, and Jeremy keeps on signing for Ryan’s damn deliveries.

“That’s all done… Thanks again for helping me out.”

At least she’s well-mannered about it.

“No problem, uh… I actually don’t know your name,” he says, “that’s so rude of me. Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it!” she says brightly, “I’m Sofía. Have a great morning, Jeremy.”

“You too,” he calls as the door closes, and is left with another large box to lug up through the elevator.

 _Man, Ryan… I don’t know what the hell you’re buying, but it weighs a fuckin’_ _ton_ _._

There’s no answer when he returns to the fourth floor, as per usual, so he leaves the mail just inside his own front door. With his workout routine and the prospect of a very bland salad for lunch, he promptly forgets about the box—

\--until he hears a disturbance in the hall.

He looks through the peephole. Outside, there are several men in blue uniforms, doing the best to creep around and failing miserably. It was well-known that the LSPD were enthusiastic, but ultimately crap shots, poorly trained, and riddled with corruption.

Jeremy opens the door and peers around the corner. The cops seem to have given up on being stealthy, and are just loitering now.

“Can I help you?” he asks slowly.

Of the three men, one receives attention from the other two and speaks up. He’s obviously the most highly ranked, then. “Yeah,” he says, “we’ve received a report of a disturbance from this apartment. We think the tenant might be mixed up in something they shouldn’t be… Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary recently?”

“Like what?” Jeremy says, unsurprised that Ryan might be a bit dodgy, but not feeling too keen on letting slip something that would get him in trouble. To be on the safe side, he pulls the door a little closer to closed – just in case they spot the huge parcel waiting to be passed on.

“Comings and goings at odd hours, strange deliveries, possibly the presence of unsavoury characters…”

“No,” Jeremy lies. “Nothing like that. As far as I know, whoever lives there has a nine-to-five job and keeps the noise down after ten. Real considerate. Never met them though, I mostly keep to myself.”

The cop scowls with disappointment. “Thanks for your time,” he says begrudgingly, and the three head towards the elevator.

Idiots. Most of the LSPD couldn’t find their own asses with a flashlight and a roadmap, and these morons were no exception. No wonder there was constant battling between the criminal rich and the criminal vigilantes.

He tries the door himself before work that night, but there’s no answer. Instead, he has an uneventful evening of pizza errands (all the while keeping an eye out for any deliveries that might be going to the Fake AH Crew – none so far), refills the tank of his motorbike on the way back, and wonders if he might get that drawing he was working on finished up before he commits to sleeping.

Of course, as soon as the elevator doors open on the fourth floor, he realises that a spanner’s been thrown into the works.

There are four police officers this time by the sounds of the chatter, a duo outside, and a duo _inside_ , and – oh, shit – Ryan’s door has been busted wide open. One of the women is holding a two-person battering ram, one of the ones with pistons inside so that the entrance breaks open faster.

“Stay where you a--! Oh, it’s you,” says one of them, and takes off his helmet to reveal the male officer from earlier. “Sorry we’ve had to come back so late. The warrant took a while to go through.”

“It’s no problem,” Jeremy replies weakly.

There’s a sneeze from inside the apartment. He and the cop look at each other awkwardly.

“Am I… okay to go into my place? I work nights, so…”

“You and me both, buddy,” the officer smirks. “Yeah, it should be okay… Are you sure you didn’t see anything today, though? Not even after we were gone?”

“No,” Jeremy says, and the elevator doors ding.

“ _Stay where you are!_ ”

“Ah, it’s okay!” Jeremy shouts, waving his arms in front of the two officers _and their two guns_ , like some sort of dumbass. “We have shifts together, we’re just gonna- gonna play some video games after work!”

Ryan is standing in the elevator with very wide eyes. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, apparently, but he’s definitely not sticking them up, and his attention is flickering between the armed cops and the obvious liar.

“Took you a while to park up, buddy... I thought there were more spaces than that,” Jeremy adds.

There’s an agonising two seconds where Ryan doesn’t reply, and Jeremy’s fixated on the guns, because these are real police guns _and oh my god dude, they’re obviously inside your house, the out is there, so just take it_.

“Yeah,” he finally says shortly. It was probably said well within an appropriate time frame, to be fair, but to Jeremy, who’s in the middle, it felt like a fuckin’ lifetime. “There are… There are some cop cars out front. I couldn’t get my usual space.”

The cops lower their weapons. Jeremy bottles up the sigh of relief he wants to release for a later time.

“Are we… Okay to go inside?” he asks tentatively.

The male cop nods. “Yeah. Go right ahead. Sorry for any disturbances tonight, boys, we’ll be finished searching the apartment real soon.”

“Good luck,” says Jeremy, pushing his, and opens his door for Ryan to enter first. Los Santos’ police force were _terminally_ half-witted.

The sigh of relief comes back with a vengeance as soon as he’s fiddled with the locks. Now he’s got a possible criminal and a frighteningly hot man in his apartment who he wasn’t planning on inviting in. “I don’t wanna know anything,” he hisses, “you can stay here until they fuck off, but I’m not being weighed down with info that my back can’t take. No way.”

He moves into the main room and suddenly stares, taking in the fact that his bed, kitchen, and living area were all one room. One room which felt distinctly smaller with two adult men consuming space in it.

Ryan’s moved over to the bathroom door, and looks through the mop of black hair he’s wearing loose, in a move which sends Jeremy quietly reeling.

“Why did you do that?” he asks.

“Because the LSPD are stupid, and I don’t wanna be saddled with your mail for the rest of my life. Speaking of… I hid this in the bathroom earlier ‘cos the cops were sniffing around before work. Don’t forget it when you leave. And don’t you _dare_ tell me what’s inside it.”

“I won’t,” says Ryan.

He tucks one side of his parting behind his ear, and Jeremy actually wants to die because he’s so attractive.

The feeling intensifies when the taller man wanders into the vacant space of the living room (god, he’s got a _great_ ass), taking his time to examine the cheap couch and the fold-away table. The surface still has all his ridiculous practice artwork from the afternoon laid out.

“You draw?”

“If you can call it that.”

“Not for a living, then.”

Jeremy laughs, despite himself. “God, no. I deliver fucking pizza, if I could make some commissions on the side I’d be worrying about rent a little less.”

“They’re good,” Ryan says honestly, moving the sheets of paper apart with a single digit. “This one’s awesome.”

He’s picked out the anatomy study Jeremy was hoping he could finish up before bed. It’s just a skeleton, hasn’t even got any shading on it yet, but he guesses it’s a nice compliment anyway. “Thanks,” he says awkwardly. “Can’t draw people if you can’t draw bones, I guess.”

“It’s… inspired.”

Jeremy’s not even going to bother to ask what that means. “The flaw in what I said earlier,” he says, gesturing to basically all of his apartment, “is that I don’t actually own any video games to play to pass the time.”

“You don’t?”

“Dude. I’ve got a craptop and that’s it.”

Ryan snorts, and sits down in front of it.

“It is!” Jeremy insists, reaching up with his leg to nudge his PC with his toe. “Piece of shit.”

“What do you like?”

“Like, video game-wise?”

“Yeah.”

“Borderlands,” Jeremy replies instantly. “It’s been forever since I played it. Sometimes I go over to Trevor’s place and play it, he keeps a save file for me.”

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Trevor?”

“He’s the cook at work. Makes a damn good pizza.”

There’s an agreeing noise that might mean, _ah, I see_.

“Look,” Jeremy says suddenly, trying to keep his voice down, “I don’t usually do this. I’m not exactly in the business of harbouring police suspects. I don’t know what you’ve done but… _I don’t know_ , dude, you get frequent parcels delivered here, _always_ without a name on them, and you’re never home at consistent hours, and I don’t even know what you do for a living?”

He doesn’t mean for it to come out like a question, but Ryan lets his hair drift into his eyes again, and mumbles: “…public relations.”

“That could mean _anything_ , and also I don’t care,” he says. “The point is, you seem like an okay guy, and you’re not rude or standoffish, so I thought I’d help you out. Just don’t bring the cops right outside my door again.”

Ryan nods.

“Not much of a talker, are you?”

“Actions speak louder than words.”

Jeez. Fuckin’ _thespian_ on his hands here.

He throws a pillow from his bed at the couch, and digs out a comforter from the storage under the frame.

“Here. You can crash here until they leave.”

“They won’t find anything,” Ryan says firmly, catching it when Jeremy throws it across the room, and then adds, “thanks.”

“No problem. I sleep in til eleven.”

“I won’t wake you.”

He doesn’t. When Jeremy blinks away his weariness the next morning, it’s past noon, and Ryan’s disappeared. The comforter is folded on top of the pillow, in a neat pile on the couch. Apparently, his mail was picked up, too, because next to it lies a letter from the bank; and true to his word, the box has been removed.

As he rolls out of bed and starts to tear open his mail, he notices that his door is still locked, chain and all. He doesn’t even know how that’s possible.

“It’s a good job you’re pretty,” he grouches.

The direct payment he set up for his rent has sent his account into the red, which is just _perfect_. Looks like he’s skipping his workout routine this afternoon to go sort out this, instead. Jeremy takes a quick shower and throws on some clothes, scrounging together what physical cash he has from his delivery tips and stashing it in the pockets of his hoodie.

He doesn’t like Lombank Tower, because it’s basically just an enormous criminal disaster waiting to happen, so he avoids it like the plague. Instead, he tends to visit the more moderately sized branch, twenty minutes’ walk across the city. Walk? Well, after all, he did have to miss out on his exercise regime. Might as well sneak in some gentle cardio.

Jeremy’s waiting in line with thirty dollars, mostly in quarters, when,

without warning,

the shutters for all the windows go down.

In the dimness, his eyes roll automatically. “For fuck’s sake,” he mutters, over the sound of everyone around him screaming, and a shout from the doorway: _everyone on the floor!_

Oh, hey, who’d’ve guessed it? It’s the Fakes. They’re all here: Kingpin, Jack Pattillo, Vagabond (sans skull mask – he has his red war paint on today), even Mogar is hanging behind for once. The lady beside him has a shock of cotton candy pink hair – as well as a belt full of homemade electrical devices – so she must be Kdin, hacker extraordinaire for the Crew. The Golden Boy, and a girl with deep purple waves cascading down her shoulders (Dollface? Doll Face? Was it two words, or one?), looked to be standing guard outside. Jeremy only got a glimpse of them before the main shutter crashes down as well.

Choosing the teller on the end of the row seems to have paid off, because he’s pretty well hidden in the corner here. Pattillo’s keeping an eye on the main grouping of hostages on the floor, her gun control impeccable.

Kingpin and Vagabond walk calmly up to the teller who’s in charge and begin discussions. Jeremy keeps a close eye on them, purely out of curiosity; he’s always interested in the motivations of the gangs in Los Santos to commit what they do. It’s either for power, or for power and misplaced benevolence, and he’s never quite sure if the Fake AH Crew fall into the groups with good intentions or the ones with oligarchic ones.

Where are Mogar and Kdin? His brain is getting too focused on the details, but it’s kept him alive so far. Shitty robbers. Real ones. Maybe a Sherlock-style perspective is what he needs to survive.

 _Damn_ , he thinks approvingly, getting distracted. Kingpin’s suit probably cost more than his annual earnings would come to. If he had that kind of money, Jeremy would probably burn it on the loudest jacket he could find, just for kicks. Worst thing was, Vagabond _did_ have that kind of money, and there he stood – tall, dark, and pants-pissingly scary, with a leather jacket and fucking _dad jeans_ on.

Great ass, though.

…Ah.

Jeremy suddenly feels like the world’s most embarrassingly homosexual detective.

If Vagabond took out his ponytail, would his black hair hang loose, down to his shoulders and over his eyes? If he scrubbed off the face paint, would he have dashing features and a crooked nose? Ryan was around six foot, sure, and Vagabond was clearly taller than Kingpin Ramsey. Maybe six foot. He couldn’t know for sure, that was the infuriating part, he’d never be certain unless Ryan revealed Vagabond or vice versa, but…

It made so much sense. Ryan didn’t _live_ in B4-32 – it was a fucking _safehouse_. He could lie low there when he had downtime.

Jeremy’s trying to wrap his head around whether it counts as hiding a wanted man if you didn’t _know_ they were a wanted man, when a bullet tears through Vagabond’s shoulder.

It goes in slow motion; Kingpin quick-draws a pistol from his jacket and shoots the cop hidden on the stairs instantly. More screaming from the people on the floor. Pattillo whirls around, gun in hand. She looks like she’s searching for someone vulnerable; for protection. For insurance.

In the elongated seconds he has - watching everything occur, his brain rushing through thoughts at a million miles per hour - he comes up with three things:

 _One_ \- the police had found a way in. Not easily enough, however, that they could instantly overpower the Fakes.

 _Two_ \- Mogar and Kdin had disappeared earlier. Mogar was the demolitions expert, and Kdin was a hacker, so logically, the two of them were breaking into a more important part of the bank. Safety deposit boxes were in the rear of the building on this floor. He even knew how to get to them, because he quite often dropped the week’s takings from work into the company-rented one; Matt deemed them much safer than immediate deposit into an account, and with good reason, given the enormous spike in cybercrime in recent months. Better to trickle the money in slowly.

 _Three_ – Jeremy had a choice to make.

Does he save a gang Ryan might be a part of? Risk his own life, his criminal record, to maximise the survival rate of a man he barely knows?

Or does he stay on the ground and wait for the authorities?

It takes him two seconds to decide. The authorities are anything but. Fuck _that_ noise. Whilst Pattillo is distracted by her associate getting glacked in the shoulder, Jeremy, from his corner by the far counter, dips into the back of the bank.

The adrenaline thrumming through his veins helps him to keep cool about the situation. There’ll be plenty of time for hysterics later, he reasons, jogging through the corridors as silently as he could.

He comes to a stop; just around the wall of the last stretch of hallway, towards the safety deposit room, there’s the smell of burning plastic and a cop who doesn’t spot him.

Leaning around the corner, he takes in the sight of the busted security door, still smoking.

Mogar’s in the room.

He looks like he’s setting down plastic explosives. It could be C4. It lines all the way around a set of 2 safety deposit boxes, and he’s pointing a gun to ignite it when the cop yells at him.

“Freeze! Michael Jones, stay where you are--”

“I don’t have _time_ for this,” Mogar says, sounding annoyed.

He steps back and blasts the C4, setting off a miniature explosion, and before the smoke’s even cleared the cop sets off a taser.

Mogar convulses. Jeremy’s never seen anything like it. His chest immediately contracts, forcing a series of guttural noises from his lungs; every muscle in his body contracts within seconds, and he goes down like a sack of shit. The man would have probably been okay if the taser barbs had hit him from behind; at best, he’d be annoyed they tried to damage his leather jacket. But he was facing the cop, and they went straight through his shirt.

“Yeah, how’d you like that?” the cop sneers, going for a second charge.

He doesn’t get the chance to, however, because Jeremy kicks out the backs of his knees and punches him in the face. The cop’s lights go out _immediately_.

“Ow,” he says plainly, massaging his knuckles.

Mogar spits curse words through his clenched jaw from below him. Jeremy ignores him – he’s still got to work out a plan of action. First call was the C4. There’s an overwhelming stench of fresh tar in the air, but he powers through and reaches into the mangled remains of the safety deposit boxes. There’s a flash drive in the top one. The bottom one holds a (now singed) envelope and a clear plastic case, holding two SD cards.

He pockets them.

Next is Mogar. There’s no way of pulling the barbs out, not when time is so thin on the ground, so he ejects the taser charge from the gun, and puts it in the pocket of the leather jacket. The wires weren’t ideal, but at least no one would be tripping over them.

“I’m trying to help you out, so don’t be an ass about it,” Jeremy tells him. He hooks an arm around the gang member’s elbow, and heaves him to his feet.

“I’m a delight,” Mogar retorts. It looks like it takes a great deal of effort to get the words to come out in the way he wants. Wiping a stray string of drool from the corner of his mouth, he does his best to force his legs to take a little of his weight from Jeremy’s hands: “the _fuck_ is happening?”

“No idea, pal. There’s a couple cops coming in, but not enough that they’ve found a proper entrance.”

“Like they’d be stupid enough… to risk hostages,” he slurs. “Pocket. Left.”

Jeremy takes the arm supporting Mogar’s waist and dips it into the jacket. There’s a burner phone. It’s a really old, crappy flip-top cell.

“Hold down eight.”

He does so, and presses it to Mogar’s ear:

“We’re moving,” the man huffs.

Jeremy hangs up and continues dragging him towards the counter.

“Where to?”

“Just… out.”

When they get back into the main room of the bank, it’s clear things have gone a little south: Pattillo’s got a man by his hair and a gun against his temple; Kingpin’s standing over a second cop body. Vagabond, to his surprise, is standing up, with little more than a hand applying pressure to his shoulder wound.

“Out, out, _out_ \--”

As soon as they spot Mogar, they leap into action, because obviously things haven’t gone well on his end, either. Pattillo stays where she is, Geoff darts into position to cover them on the way out, and Vagabond?

On his way over toward the duo, Vagabond grabs a cowboy hat from the head of a hostage, and plants it over Jeremy’s head to cover his eyes. Then he takes his good arm and picks up the slack on Mogar’s other side. He’s sweating through his face paint, beads of liquid pain and exertion sticking to him like condensation.

It’s almost like falling into formation. Vagabond bangs on the shutters, and the mechanism ascends manually; Dollface is lifting them, supporting the metal sheet with a _superhuman_ amount of strength. First out are Jeremy, Mogar, and Vagabond. Kingpin follows them and covers the shutters whilst Pattillo darts out, her hostage abandoned, and she crashes in the driver’s seat before Jeremy’s even helped Mogar into the car.

Mogar drags him in. Welp. Guess he’s here to stay.

As they speed down the highway, trying to lose a lone cop car, the Golden Boy pulls up next to the window on his motorbike.

“What happened?!” he yells. His accent is stronger than the winds buffeting him. Jeremy briefly wonders how his shiny glasses are staying on his face.

“I don’t fuckin’ know! Where’s Meg?!”

The Golden Boy squints at Ramsey from behind his shades. “Separate bike, with Kdin!”

“Good,” Kingpin bellows, “Steffie’s meeting us at Michael’s, see you there--”

And the Golden Boy speeds off.

“If Gavin gets in a wreck, I’m going to fucking kill him all over again,” Pattillo decides, swerving to avoid a sudden spray of bullets. “I hope you know that.”

“Not if I get there first,” Kingpin mutters under his breath.

From behind Kingpin’s seat, Vagabond leans out the window with his active arm, and returns fire. Jeremy has to hold onto his newly-acquired hat when the rear quarter window on his side explodes, sending glass fragments everywhere.

“Jack,” heaves Mogar--

“Take care of it, V,” she warns. Seconds later, Jeremy catches sight of the cop car in the rear-view mirror veering wildly off course – looks like Vagabond took out a wheel. It immediately T-bones a car on the other side of the highway and starts smoking like crazy.

Kingpin breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank _fuck_.”

Jeremy rests his head on his knees. He’s still holding on to the top of the cowboy hat. The residual adrenaline in his system, coupled with Jack’s evasive driving, is starting to make him feel sick.

He pulls himself together when the car roars down an alleyway and neatly parks up in a garage, pulls himself together enough, anyway, to practically lift Mogar from the car and into through the fire exit of an apartment building. He might recognise it, but it’s hard to tell amongst all the commotion. The group take the elevator all the way up to floor thirty-five, and Kingpin helps him support Mogar all the way up.

Vagabond stands silently in the corner as they rise through the floors, pressing hard on his shoulder and scrunching his face up _not nearly enough_ for a man who got hit with a bullet.

The door to the apartment is propped open. No key card necessary. Kingpin goes in first, angling them sideways so they can still support Michael’s spasming muscles. Jeremy wishes he’d had this kind of help moving out of his last apartment.

As soon as they’re in, a stranger takes Kingpin’s place and guides them over to the couch, peering sternly over her glasses: “I put down a tarp, quit your whining,” she says immediately.

“Get fucked, Steffie.”

“Uh, Steffie? V got shot. You might wanna look at him, first.”

“Shit, you’re right. Sorry, Michael,” Steffie says, helping him lie on his back on the couch, “blood first, _then_ taser.”

Mogar – Michael – groans and opens his jacket. The barbs look painful as hell.

“C’mere, V, let me take a look at that shoulder... Hey, it’s your lucky day, it looks like it only clipped you. Lots of blood and drama without actually being too bad.”

Jeremy’s too confused by everything that’s happened that day to spend any patience points on possibly-Ryan, so he takes a seat on one of the other couches in this (frankly _obscenely_ large) apartment, and picks slivers of glass out of his sleeve.

“Who’s your friend, Michael?”

“No clue,” Michael tells Jack, straining, “he punched out a cop for me, though.”

From the bar, Kingpin chokes on a tumbler of what looks to be soda. “What?! Did I let a _stranger_ into my fuckin’ car?!”

“It’s my fuckin’ car,” Jack says testily, “and I’ll drive around whoever I damn well please in it.”

“Not on a heist,” Kingpin whines.

Jack ignores him. “Let’s get a good look at you, buddy,” she says. There’s suddenly a feminine hand guiding his chin up, ready to examine the man under the hat, and he’s looking at the beautiful face of one of Los Santos’ most dangerous women. Her red hair frames her features; her smile is bright with recognition. “Oh, hey! Pizza boy!”

 _“Pizza boy?!”_ Kingpin explodes.

“Ah, cram it, Geoff, he saved our asses back there.”

“Seconded,” calls out Michael weakly. “Kdin and I would’ve been bipped for _sure_.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence. Geoff paces exasperatedly for a few seconds, and decides to calm his nerves with a freshly-poured Diet Coke.

The smell of medical disinfectant permeates the air, and Steffie says, _“all clean!”_ jubilantly.

At the same time, Vagabond murmurs, “he covered for me, too.”

The group stares incredulously. Even Steffie stops, needle in hand.

The Golden Boy chooses that _exact_ moment to burst through the door: “guys!” he shrieks, “ _Michael!_ Did everyone make it--?”

“So the pizza delivery guy is our fuckin’ _guardian angel_ now?!” Geoff thunders, throwing his glass against the bar with a crunching noise. Steffie shakes her head, and gets right on stitching up the bullet wound.

“Wha--?”

“Shut up, Gavin!” the boss says, his voice cracking, pointing an extremely accusing finger at him, “who the _fuck_ is this guy? And why the fuck does everyone seem to know him but me?!”

“Because you never get the pizza, Geoff,” Jack says patiently.

“I’m the fourth most wanted man in San Andreas, I’m not risking my life to pay for the fucking _pizza_ \--”

“What’s going on?” says Gavin, bewildered. “It took Vagabond bloody _months_ to start talking when he met me. How long has he known this random bloke for?”

“A little while,” mumbles Vagabond.

“I fucking _knew_ it,” Jeremy says, the revelation pulling him to his feet, and before he knows it, he’s said the first thing since they all got the hell outta Dodge.

“...Sorry.”

“Sorry?! I salvaged your mail for you for _two and a half months_! I know the mail lady _by name_ now! The only things I had planned today were working out and trying to rescue my bank account from negative numbers, and I didn’t get to do either of those.”

The painted mouth hardens into a tight line just at Steffie pulls the sutures taut, sealing the stitches with a surgical knot. “I’ll make it up to you,” he says, distorting his face paint with a particularly intense wince.

“How?!” Jeremy asks. “Who knows if I can even go back to my apartment now? No apartment means no _job_ , Ryan--”

(“ _That was the capital R-word!_ Is the pizza boy _mental_?!” Gavin squeaks worriedly. “I’ve seen Vagabond kill men for less than that! What are we supposed to do?”)

“I’ll make it up to you,” Vagabond repeats.

“What’s your name?” Jack says suddenly, a little too loudly.

Jeremy stops. His collarbone aches, heavy with tension from the muscles supporting it. They were gonna find out, regardless as to whether or not he told them, so he might as well just come straight out with it.

“Uh… Jeremy. I’m Jeremy Dooley.”

“V,” Jack says gently, “how about we take Jeremy back to his place, and you can see what’s going on there?”

Vagabond acquiesces. He pulls the bloodstained shirt back on, ignoring Steffie’s disapproving looks.

“…Let’s go.”

Gavin shivers as Vagabond passes, clearly unused to his voice; Jack guides Jeremy past him, and back into the hall towards the elevator. As they leave, he picks up the remnants of conversation from the remaining Fakes:

“I’m gonna burn down the pizza place.”

“Geoff, _no,_ they do the best Meat Feast I’ve ever had--”

“--the base is so thin you could read the flippin’ paper through it! It’s proper Italian style--”

“I don’t _care_. You guys can feast on meat someplace else, and in your own damn time.”

The ride to the garage is even more awkward than the ride up to Mogar’s apartment, but at least there’s a little less injury this time. Jeremy’s beginning to wish he’d kept his dumbass mouth shut to begin with. Couldn’t be helped now, though; the two follow Jack into a different locker, and Vagabond silently ducks into the backseat of the other, thankfully intact car.

“You’re in shotgun, honey. Vagabond needs some time to sulk.”

In the sole hour since the cops had chased them, Jeremy’s gained a newfound appreciation for cars with glass that isn’t busted. Jack slaps his hand when he starts fiddling with the window controls.

“Ubiquity Rise, yeah?”

“Oh,” he says, surprised to hear his address being said aloud by someone who isn’t him. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Jack wrinkles her nose. “What a shitfest. I couldn’t believe it when V told us he was holed up there… No offense.”

“None taken. I know it’s a dump, that’s why I’m fuckin’ living there too.”

Jeremy can see how a woman like Jack could be dangerous, with a giggle like that. “I like you very much, Jeremy Dooley,” she smiles, and the man in question wonders what happened in her life to steer her down a path of crime. “Now put your damn seatbelt on. If we get caught short, you could go through the windshield, y’know.”

Vagabond sits rigidly in the back seat for the whole journey.

When they pull up in the parking lot around the back, Jack holds a halting arm across Jeremy’s chest: “Vagabond’s gonna go see if the coast is clear. Then we’ll let you up.”

“Spectacular,” Jeremy mutters, and Vagabond wordlessly slams the car door shut like a moody teenager. They watch him sneak into the fire escape at the rear of the building.

“So... How’d you do it, pizza boy?”

“Do what?”

“How the hell did you figure it out?” Jack asks, and she kinda looks impressed _and_ annoyed. “It took you three months to figure out what the LSPD haven’t _in all the years we’ve been active_. You obviously _suspected_ V was living next door, if you didn’t already connect the dots.”

Jeremy thinks of Ryan’s ass, and then tries not to, because his face is heating up.

“Uh,” he stammers, “I guess I’ve—I’ve just got a good eye? For recognising stuff. Yeah.”

“I’ll say. You saved our fucking skins back there, Jeremy Dooley. Breaking Michael out of holding was _not_ on my to-do list today, that would’ve been a shit-ton of wasted time.”

Jeremy lets out a small breath he didn’t realise he’d pent up.

“…He likes you, though.”

“What?!”

Jack smirks, drumming her hands on the wheel. “I’ve never seen Vagabond stick up for someone like that, not someone who wasn’t part of the Fakes. And you called him by name! In front of _everybody_! That definitely doesn’t fly.”

“And yet I’m still here,” Jeremy concludes.

“Yeah,” agrees Jack. “Still here.”

They glance up through the windshield to the fourth floor rooms; the sun glints wildly as the window in Jeremy’s apartment is propped open.

“That’s your cue, Eye-For-Detail-Dooley,” she tells him, “guess the cops aren’t onto you… yet. You’d best go on up there and figure out what your plan is.”

Jeremy unbuckles his seatbelt. “Hey… Thanks.”

“No problem, kid. Tell Vagabond he’s making his own way home, though. I’m not his personal fucking taxi.”

“You got it,” he says, and, after crossing over to the rear exit, watches Jack display perfect traffic etiquette. It’s extremely odd, he thinks to himself as he bounds up the stairs, to see that even infamous criminals have the capacity to use a blinker.

Nothing’s surprising him anymore, though, if he’s honest. It’s been quite a long day.

When he reaches the fourth floor, however, he’s a little taken aback to see Ryan leaning up against the wall that separates the front doors of each other’s apartments. His face paint is mostly intact; Jeremy notes, though, that the black of his eyes has smudged into the red of the space between them. The image of Ryan unconsciously pinching the bridge of his nose, overcome with frustration, would be funny if Jeremy wasn’t pretty pissed off to begin with.

“The mail lady left me a ‘Sorry We Missed You’ card,” Ryan says, without glancing up to acknowledge his neighbour’s presence.

“Yeah, well, what can I say?” Jeremy replies sharply. “I got held up at the bank.”

“I said I’d make it up to you,” Ryan winces.

“With what?! How can you _possibly_ make this up to me? Is there, like, an underground network of people who can put me in illegal witness protection? Oh, actually, that just sounds like identity fraud,” he thinks.

“Tangent.”

“Shut _up_ , Ryan-- Oh my god,” Jeremy says, wide-eyed, “is that even your real name?”

“Yes!” Ryan says defensively. His leather jacket rustles as he starts playing with the sleeves: “well, kind of.”

“ _Kind of?_ What the fuck does that mean?!”

“Look,” Ryan says, “I don’t usually do this.”

“Do what? Tell your neighbour to address you by a name that strikes the fear of God into gang members? Let him be shouted at by Kingpin Ramsey? Ooh,” he adds, “what about how you keep turning up in places I’m at?”

“The bar was an accident. We were at a negotiation.”

“Why’d you kick me out, then?”

“Negotiations can get… shooty. On occasion.”

“Oh, awesome!” Jeremy says, in a voice which betrays how _not-fucking-awesome_ this whole thing is. “The pizza deliveries I didn’t know I was giving to you? Do they get ‘shooty’ as well?”

“I wouldn’t let them--”

“How noble of you. They’re less shooty than whatever was in your contraband deliveries, I’m sure.”

“You didn’t have to pick those up for me.”

He blanches at the reminder: “I know that! I just didn’t know you were a Fake until after I’d started doing it! You can’t just stop doing favours for your neighbours, it’s _rude_. It’s not what normal people do, Ryan.”

“Are you trying to teach this lesson to me, or every resident in the building?”

“Are you seriously lecturing me on my volume?” Jeremy says incredulously. “You’re something else, _Vagabond_. This isn’t even the half of it. You know, I should be giving you a piece of my mind--”

“But I didn’t order anything,” he says quietly, and Jeremy stops for breath.

It’s a bad joke, about his bad job.

But it’s been a long day.

He’s gripped, slowly, by the kind of mirth that feels like diving from a high point - there's a calm before the impact rocks him. Jeremy tries not to snort, and fails, and holds in spluttering laughter, before he's _howling_ :

“A piece of--!” he weeps, “a _pizza_ my--”

And Ryan – breaking into a smile, still in his full war paint get-up - looks far too pleased with himself.

“Dad jokes and dad jeans. Who are you?” he says, and wipes at his eyes.

Ryan stops slouching against the plaster. “Who are _you_ , Jeremy Dooley?” he counters. “The pizza guy who knows how criminals work. It’s an unusual combination, you gotta admit.”

“It’s just common sense.”

“It’s an artist’s skill,” is the careful correction, “you’ve worked out how the little stuff makes up a bigger picture. It’s fucking annoying, is what it is.”

“Annoying?” he asks, and Ryan stands up straight, now, a looming presence in these ever-empty corridors. It’s hard to know if he’s talking to Vagabond, or Ryan, or if they’re one and the same.

“Jeremy,” he says slowly, “I _gotta_ know how you figured out it was me.”

“Uh,” Jeremy replies, because the hot guy next door is a seasoned criminal, and liable to fly into a rage at any given moment. This trait probably doesn’t make exceptions for declarations of non-heterosexual attraction.

“Please… I need to know. I can’t get caught over it, so if I’ve fucked something up, you have to let me know.”

“I’ll tell you if you don’t react badly to it,” Jeremy grimaces.

“Done,” says Ryan, “I won’t react at _all_. I’m pretty good at that, these days.”

“Okay,” he agrees, and stops.

How does he even start to phrase it?

“Okay, so. You didn’t fuck anything up, exactly… But. Your jeans...”

Ryan looks down at them in surprise. There’s a rust coloured stain, a blurred handprint, running along his left thigh. “My jeans? These are my work jeans,” he says, stunned. “Did I wear them here accidentally?”

Jeremy feels ridiculously anxious. “Not exactly. It’s, uh, more to do with the contents.”

He’s met with a blank stare, full of incomprehension.

“For _fuck’s_ sake, Ryan,” he blurts out, “I was staring at your ass.”

From the response – rapid blinking, biting his bottom lip, returning to fiddling with the sleeves of his jacket – Jeremy can only assume Ryan’s turning a beautiful scarlet colour under the oils on his face.

“Yeah, sorry-not-sorry. You’ve got a _super_ great ass. Real shame you gotta hide it from now on. I’m just--” he jabs a finger at B4-31-- “gonna head inside and look for a new apartment, so that I can run away from everything and maaaaybe keep my job. Good luck with whatever the hell you people do.”

Ryan’s hand stops him from reaching for the handle. Jeremy flinches, hard; dimly, he registers the hand is the one on the side of his bullet-pierced shoulder.

“You said you weren’t gonna react,” he reminds him.

Ryan’s eyes are absurdly green, brought out in part by the shitty lighting in the corridor, and the blood red of his cheekbones.

Jeremy knows this due to being in very, _very_ close proximity to the man’s face.

“I _absolutely_ lied,” Ryan says decisively, and presses his paint-streaked lips against Jeremy’s own.

Kissing the Vagabond feels exactly like being singled out by him in a crowd – it’s terrifying and satisfying all in one, and the gratification makes him shudder as he presses back. There’s a pointed contrast between making out and intimidating those present at a heist, however, in that Ryan doesn’t kiss with authority. It’s not a power display. It’s an _exchange_ , and he kisses like he’s sharing something.

Jeremy wraps an arm around the back of Ryan’s neck, frowning with the concentration needed to focus on avoiding the shoulder. Ryan’s sharing something with _him_ , of all people.

“I don’t even know your last name,” he breathes, breaking them apart.

“I’m sure you’ll deduce it eventually.”

“Can we drop that now, please? I’m hardly Sherlock Holmes.”

“You should be proud of it,” Ryan says. The red paint on his nose is smeared and patchy – Jeremy suspects that if he were to examine his reflection, there’d be a stripe daubed across his cheekbone. “It’s a great skill. That’s the kind of thing that can keep you alive.”

“That, and my history with gymnastics,” Jeremy says. “And karate... There was a dumbass at work the other month who I punched clean out, it was great.”

“You did _gymnastics_?”

It’s oddly fulfilling to realise they’re both out of their depth in terms of information on the other. Jeremy quirks a brave eyebrow. “Yup,” he grins. “You wanna find out how good I am at it?”

Ryan goes unquestionably red at that – the little window to his skin, exposed in the absence of paint, radiates with the innuendo. He doesn’t audibly reply, but he _does_ push down on the door handle, which is just as good in Jeremy’s opinion.

“So Vagabond likes flexible guys. Good to know.”

“Maybe not right _now_ ,” Ryan admits, backing Jeremy into his own home. “Steffie might finish me off herself if I rip my stitches open.”

Oh, yeah. Ryan had a huge fucking bullet hole in his jacket. “You really gotta get some gauze on that,” Jeremy says absently, resting a palm on the cool leather underneath.

“Mmm. Later.”

The dismissal’s sealed with another kiss, open-mouthed and fiercer. Jeremy runs fingers underneath the jacket, dancing across the mottled fabric pulled across Ryan’s chest, and discards it onto the carpet; Ryan urges their bodies together, pulling him closer with cold hands on either side of his neck. The stolen cowboy hat is lost somewhere in the hallway as they pass by the door to the bathroom.

The words _not right now_ and _later_ sound like very promising ideas of things to come.

Distantly, Jeremy recognises that he’s in a position to back them into the welcoming seats of the couch. It’s probably going to be a lot more comfortable (and a lot less exerting) on Ryan’s injury.

“Have you even had any painkillers?” he says, muffled against their mouths.

“Don’t need ‘em.”

“Masochist,” he huffs, and worries Ryan’s bottom lip to the tune of some _very_ agreeable humming noises.

Keeping the potential pain in mind, he breaks away again before Ryan’s knees hit the couch and send both of them crashing down. “You should sit,” he murmurs, letting his eyes roam over those bottle-green eyes, and the way that his hands have red and black marks smudged haphazardly between his fingers. The black lines across Ryan’s mouth are heather grey. His cheekbones are even worse, blurred into misshapen pink and off-white splotches where crisp lines once were.

Ryan stiffly retrieves the comforter and pillow he’d left folded there that morning, and looks like he’s trying to find somewhere to leave them without spoiling how neat they are. Whilst it’s touching to see a gang member being considerate about some of his (shitty, cheap, and very few) belongings, Jeremy hasn’t got time for it right now – he doesn’t hesitate to yank them from hands that should be on _him_ , and promptly slings them across the room.

Ryan takes a seat.

“Honestly,” Jeremy mutters.

He’s then terribly distracted by the sight of the guy he’s about to get off with, because despite the inviting way he leans into his surroundings with his whole body, there’s something very raw and open about the way Ryan looks up through his eyelashes.

“What?” the man breathes.

“God,” Jeremy says, and straddles Ryan’s lap, “you’re not even trying to be hot, you just _are_.”

He drags denim against denim, and bloodstained hands leap to his hips unconsciously. Ryan hisses inhumanly, visually battling the urge to throw his head against the back of the couch; he tilts his chin up, full of defiance. Before Jeremy can let slip any other dumb sentences, there’s a sharp grip tangling in the back of his hair and dragging him down. He’ll gladly return the favour, because Ryan’s hair is still tied up, and he’s had a few late-night-wonderings about running his fingers through it.

It’s, like, _conditioner_ soft. This is ridiculous.

“Fuuuuck,” he accidentally says, gritting his teeth as Ryan presses the heel of his hand into Jeremy’s jeans. “You have a lot of safehouse hook-ups like this--?”

“You’re the first person I’ve even liked living near,” Ryan confesses, and the way he pops the button and tugs the zipper down with only one hand sends a little burst of electricity straight through Jeremy’s groin.

He kisses Ryan again, wrapping fists in the man’s collar, and their teeth clash with the force of it. Ryan’s tongue soothes the sensation. Can he help it, really, if his hips aren’t co-operating with the idea of sitting still? It doesn’t help that underneath him, Ryan’s just as hard. Every time he grinds down into the lap of the man underneath him, their kissing gets sharper, little bite marks embossing the other’s lips—

Ryan runs his hand across Jeremy’s waistband, and yanks his boxers down enough to wrap a hand around his dick. It doesn’t startle him, exactly, but he does exhale in a calculated, measured manner to avoid any embarrassing sounds creeping into their makeout.

“Jeremy,” he whispers against their lips. “I _really_ wanna hear you…”

If he ever needed convincing, then, oh, fuck, that’ll do it. Ryan loosely trails his fingers up his length, the pad of his thumb swiping over the head and spreading the pre-cum leaking there. Jeremy’s eyes squeeze shut, and his forehead hits the shoulder which isn’t injured:

“Oh, God, _Ryan_ \--”

“No one calls me that,” Ryan murmurs into his jaw, dragging his hand back down to the base and starting a slow, firm rhythm, “no one calls me by name anymore. I almost didn’t tell you when I first saw you.”

“Do you want me to stop?” Jeremy says raggedly.

“Not unless you want _me_ to stop.”

“Ryan,” he gasps again, hot jolts sparking somewhere in his lower back, and he turns his head to repeat it right into Ryan’s ear.

He feels Ryan’s muscles tense tightly underneath him. “Ah, just like that—You make it sound so _good_ , Jeremy.”

His hand disappears, and Jeremy leans back in confusion. He’s met with the sight of the Vagabond, his face paint absolutely wrecked, licking a wide stripe up his palm; when the grip’s returned, slicker and adjusted, it already feels so much fucking better. Ryan knows how to liven up the speed and pressure of his strokes without interrupting the rhythm.

It’s undeniably the best damn handjob Jeremy’s ever gotten.

He’s keeping it together pretty well, except Ryan switches it up in the best way, flipping his hand over so the ring formed by his index finger and thumb faces the base of his dick. The new sensation, light and fast on the ridges at his tip, makes his chest heave.

“I’m gonna,” he says, and can’t remember how the rest of the sentence is supposed to go.

“Yeah,” Ryan says in a low voice. “Go on, cum, I’ve got you--”

And he has - his other hand is so tightly clenched around Jeremy’s hipbone, holding him down, that he’s sure it’s going to leave a five-fingered bruise there. There’s a bite at his collarbone, and the best jerking off he’s ever experienced, and how exactly is Ryan this good at multitasking? It’s not a question at the forefront of his mind, if he’s honest with himself, because his consciousness is currently flooding with soft hair and calloused palms and sharp digits in his side.

Jeremy groans loudly into Ryan’s temple. With fingers digging into the back of the couch behind Ryan’s head, and legs shaking on either side of his lap, he spills messily over Ryan’s t-shirt; hips, which want to erratically twitch, are held in place by large, cold hands. Ryan teases aftershocks out of him by crooking his index finger around the underside of his cock, which, _fuck_ , feels amazing. He gives Jeremy a few final pulls, all slow and smooth, and wipes his hand on his chest.

“…Sorry about your shirt,” Jeremy finally says. He feels like he might melt.

Underneath him, Ryan shrugs with one shoulder. “Bloodstained anyway.”

It takes some effort, but Jeremy leans back on Ryan’s lap to watch his eyelashes flicker shut. “This is crazy,” he says, and realises his voice is a little rough at the edges.

It’s about to sound _wrecked_.

“These’ve gotta go,” he says, pulling at Ryan’s belt loops. He stands up on shaky legs, pulling his boxers back up, and takes in Ryan’s expression with satisfaction when he drops to his knees: “god, you’re so fucking hot,” he whines, “I really wanna suck you off.”

“Fine with me,” Ryan says, sounding strangled. He makes quick work of his jeans, and Jeremy helps to tug down his underwear, then he leans back on his heels to assess what he’s working with. Ryan’s cock is flushed, leaving wet smears against the t-shirt that’s now the only thing he’s clothed in; it’s generously sized, and nestled in dark curls at the base.

Jeremy leans in and exhales gently, smiling when it twitches in response to his breath.

“Jeremy,” says Ryan, “if you don’t blow me _right now_ , then bullet wound or no bullet wound, I _will_ grab you and fuck your face.”

He shivers, and leans in to press his lips to the side of Ryan’s length. “Maybe another time,” he murmurs, mouthing the sentence across skin that’s _radiating_ heat.

Ryan jerks, startled.

“Go easy on me,” Jeremy grins, “it’s been a little while.” He takes Ryan’s good hand and guides it to his crown, and as soon as it tightens in his hair, he wraps his mouth wetly around the tip.

Ryan grits his teeth, trying not to thrust forwards and ultimately failing. Jeremy _loves_ it. He dips his head to take more into his mouth, curling his tongue in that way he knows elicits a positive response, and bobs up and down to get used to the growing frequency at which the back of his throat is taking a hit. Jeremy doesn’t do neat blowjobs. He’s handsy, he’s bold, and he makes determined eye contact with Ryan as he purposely swallows.

He almost feels a little proud; it’s unlikely that many people have coaxed that vulnerable _ahhh_ sound from the Vagabond.

“Jeremy,” Ryan warns after a few minutes, pulling him back by the hair, “Jeremy, I’m _real_ close here--”

Jeremy slides off Ryan’s cock messily. “You can do it on my face if you want,” he says hoarsely.

Ryan groans. Jeremy, between his shaking legs, jerks him off quickly, his hand slick with a mixture of cum and spit. Ryan’s eyes snap open. The sight of Jeremy with swollen lips and wide, challenging eyes, a tight grip sliding up and down his cock, sends him over the edge.

“ _Fuuuuuuuck_ ,” he hums, and Jeremy’s cheeks and chin are suddenly streaked with white.

God, it’s been ages since he’s gotten someone else off like this. Too long, in fact. Every muscle in his body’s turned to jelly, although with the show he just witnessed, his dick is _really_ trying for a round two right now. He feels wicked good.

“Ah,” says Ryan, in that wonderfully deep voice, and swipes a line of cum away from the bridge of Jeremy’s nose. “…C’mere.”

They both move to adjust their clothes; Ryan retrieves his boxers and heaves his jeans halfway up his thighs before giving up, whereas Jeremy pulls up his shirt to wipe the jizz out of his beard, because _ew,_ that wasn’t going to be comfortable later.

Then he uses his remaining strength to curl into Ryan’s uninjured side on the couch. Ryan throws the good arm around his shoulders and pulls him closer.

“So _Vagabond_ ,” Jeremy says sleepily. “likes flexible guys and _cuddling_. This is the best day ever.”

“You were a victim of a gang-related bank visit gone awry, and you became associated with one of the most wanted crews in Los Santos,” Ryan points out.

“ _Possibly_ associated,” he corrects. “Don’t know for sure, yet. Plus, I got to punch out a cop, and that was _awesome_.”

Ryan makes an enthusiastic noise of agreement.

He lies on his chest tentatively, and then decides against it: “gross, dude. You’ve gone all crusty.”

“That’ll be the bleeding. And the cum.”

He tries not to sound too facetious when he says _oh, yeah!_ , but he gets an eye roll anyway. Ryan elbows Jeremy into a sitting position, ignoring his noises of protest, and winces as he does up his jeans:

“Where’re you goin’?”

“To change shirts.”

And whilst Jeremy hates him for moving, hates him for even having the energy to think about changing outfits right now, he still follows him carefully out into the hallway. The guy did just drag an amazing orgasm out of him. He was also fucking _shot_ earlier, which probably isn’t comfortable.

There aren’t any cops in the hall – in fact, the only evidence they’d ever been hanging around is the battering-ram-shaped dent in the cheap plywood.

“Are you gonna have to move out? They did break down your door yesterday.”

“They didn’t find anything,” Ryan says decisively. He’s fumbling with keys. “But I probably won’t stick around.”

“How do you know they didn’t find anything?” Jeremy asks, because he doesn’t want to think about never seeing his neighbour ever again. “You get parcels every ten days, dude.”

Ryan raises an eyebrow.

“What?”

“I just know,” he says, amused, and pushes open the door to reveal his apartment.

It’s _green_.

Plants, covering every surface – vibrant, vivacious, and thriving. Some were leaves erupting from terracotta planters. Some were practically tiny trees, but not the kind of bonsai types Jeremy might recognise, they were something curly and wispy. There were white and pink and yellow flowers, and some that looks like they were covered in lace. Small cacti. Larger mother-in-law’s tongue. A beast of a palm, maybe, loitering by the kitchen sink.

“Have you,” Jeremy starts, and swallows, because his blowjob-raw mouth just cracked on the last word. “…Have you been ordering _plants_ to your safehouse?”

Ryan smirks, and heads inside.

“Wait,” says Jeremy. He enters the apartment for the first time, and a lot less gracefully than Ryan at that – he’d just glided right on in and begun rifling through his wardrobe, pulling on a pair of jeans that weren’t russet-smeared. “Do you mean to tell me,” he continues, “that all those parcels - the _secret_ parcels that you didn’t even put a name on – were full of, what, pots and soil and shit?”

“It’s known as compost in the biz, I think,” Ryan says offhandedly. He’s holding up a black shirt as best as he can with one arm, examining the writing. Looks like an ‘Atomic’ tee.

“You’re a _hell_ of a guy.”

“Is that a good thing?”

Jeremy pauses in his disbelief to consider it. He doesn’t know, so he says, “yeah, I think so.”

There’s no response. Having pulled on fresh pants, then picked out a fresh t-shirt, Ryan’s faced with the reality that he isn’t going to be able to manoeuvre this as best as he’s hoping to. There’s no adrenaline to help him through the pain of a fresh bullet wound anymore, and lifting his arms is too risky.

“Are you attached to the shirt?” Jeremy asks quickly.

Ryan shakes his head, curious.

“Do you have scissors?”

The penny drops; he points to the bathroom cabinet. When Jeremy opens it to search for scissors, he spots a sliding false panel in the bottom shelf. It’s the perfect size to store a pistol in, and, lo and behold, there’s a flash of black metal when he peers quickly inside. _Jesus_.

He snatches up some antiseptic wipes too, because the injury probably isn’t going to be pretty without gauze over it.

“Okay, I’m gonna cut it from the neckline,” he says, striding back over to the wardrobe.

He doesn’t say _‘tell me to stop if you need’,_ because he already knows he couldn’t make Ryan do anything he didn’t want to do. In the same vein, he avoided the sentence ‘ _let me help you’_ – it feels like Vagabond wouldn’t take much notice of the verb ‘ _help'._

“It’s Haywood,” Ryan mumbles, as Jeremy separates the blood-hardened fabric with nail scissors.

“Sorry?”

“My last name. Haywood.”

Jeremy snips through the hem, with a little more difficulty than the rest of the t-shirt, and it peels off like a waistcoat. “Ryan Haywood,” he murmurs, ditching the bloodied rags on the floor.

Ryan reddens.

Jeremy tears open one of the antiseptic packets and starts to dab at the surrounding area, all mottled in black and brown: “I like it.”

“I like it when _you_ say it.”

He smiles. “You’d better figure out how to make me say it more, then. Ah, sorry--”

The antiseptic wipe got a little too close to where the bullet had clipped him, then; Ryan hisses, but he doesn’t flinch. When Jeremy looks up at him, searching for permission to continue cleaning up, Ryan stills his hands, leans in close, and kisses him.

He’s about to relax into it, when he remembers something really important. “Fuck,” he says loudly, pushing Ryan away, “I took something from the bank.”

The momentary hurt is overtaken by astonishment. “You did _what_?”

“Whatever Mogar—Michael—was looking for when he got tasered, I stashed it before we hauled ass outta there. It’s in my living room, if that’s where I left my hoodie--”

Ryan crowds him against the wall. Jeremy tries very hard at two things: quashing any growing fear that he’s just pissed off the Vagabond, and not tripping over the planters lining the apartment.

“I could fuck you again, right now,” he growls, and, oh lord, that changes the looming terror flooding Jeremy’s system into something _way_ more dangerous.

“Not that I’m against it, but I don’t wanna be eviscerated by your crew if we fuck your shoulder over,” Jeremy says weakly.

Ryan rolls his eyes.

“Is it important stuff?” he asks instead.

“It’s for Kdin,” is the cryptic reply. “Look, I gotta go, if you’ve got those things.”

“Quite like watching you leave,” Jeremy tells him. He smirks, despite the disappointment: “ _great_ view.”

“I’ll be back. I promise.”

“Yeah, you can’t abandon all these plants. You left a Glock in the bathroom cabinet, too.”

Ryan’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t question how Jeremy worked _that_ one out. “It’s my emergency firearm. I didn’t forget it.”

“Sure you didn’t, pal. Good job the LSPD are clueless idiots.”

Ryan grabs his shirt and holds it out. “Are you gonna give me a hand with this, or not?”

“Prefer it off,” Jeremy mumbles, but manages to help Ryan navigate his comparatively gargantuan frame into the much looser t-shirt. “Am I gonna hear from you?”

“Just promised,” Ryan says. On their way out, he grabs a motorcycle helmet from the hallway. “I owe you one…”

“You keep saying that, pal,” he jokes, “it’s not a problem unless you’ve, y’know, ruined my civilian life. But no biggie, whatever.”

He holds the door to B4-31 ajar, and rummages in the pockets of his discarded hoodie. There they are: a flash drive; a singed envelope; a clear plastic case, containing two SD cards.

“You just made a lot of lives a lot easier,” Ryan murmurs, and kisses him again before he leaves. Jeremy wonders if he’ll ever find out what he meant by that.

After scrubbing his face free from Ryan’s war paint, he spends the overlap between the afternoon and evening watching live news feeds on his craptop; although the authorities are alert to the fact that the Fakes had an accomplice at Lombank, they don’t seem to know it was him. The best (and as a matter of fact the _only_ ) CCTV image they’ve released of him is where he and Ryan were shouldering Michael on the way to the getaway car. His face is hidden underneath the brim of the cowboy hat.

“Thanks, Ry,” he says absently. The hat remains on the floor.

There’s confirmation later on, which means he can pretend like nothing happened and go to his shift at work:

**_Jeremy. You’re all good. -R_ **

He doesn’t _begin_ to question how someone found his number, but he’s willing to bet that Kdin, possibly even Golden Boy Gavin, put tabs on him as soon as humanly possible.

It’s kind of scary, but it’s also kind of comforting.

 

* * *

 

Jeremy’s awoken by the buzzer the next morning, and doesn’t even bother changing out of his pyjama pants and work t-shirt.

“Morning, Sofía,” he yawns, bumping the door release.

“It’s one in the afternoon, Jeremy,” she laughs. “Come _on_ , man.”

Wow. He’d really caught some shut-eye after his shift, huh. To be fair, it _had_ been quite an eventful series of events.

“I work nights. Tough day yesterday, I guess. Stuff for next door, is it?” he asks, eyeing up the mail Sofía was carrying, and hoping it’s not a box of shit for Ryan’s greenery.

“No, actually, not today. It’s for you,” she smiles. “Big box, smaller box, and a couple letters. Sign here…”

He does so, and feels his eyebrows knotting with confusion. Jeremy hasn’t ordered anything for a long while, but he figures he’s at least got a fine from the bank, considering he didn’t deposit his mountain of quarters yesterday.

“Something exciting, then?” Sofía smiles, watching as he tears into the hand-addressed letter first.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, scanning its contents: “a day job, actually.”

“Sounds nice. I’d do anything to get out of the postal service, it’d be so nice to sleep in the day… Much quieter.”

“You ever been to A Pizza My Mind?” Jeremy asks. “They might have something going for the night shift. Decent tips. People tend to answer the door to pizza, too - not like boxes.”

Sofía quirks an eyebrow. “Huh,” she says. “I like that joint. I might go over tomorrow and ask around.”

Jeremy shoulders the box, tucks the rest of his mail under his arm, and tells her to have a great afternoon. He practically fucking skips into his apartment.

The first letter is, as he expected, one from his bank. It tells him that he’s back in the black, apparently by a considerable amount. He’s never seen a four-digit balance in any account he’s had, not ever, but the presence of a sweet grand sends shivers down his spine.

The second letter, which he’d opened downstairs, reads like this:

 

**_J,_ **

**_We’ve corrected the account you have with Lombank. Thanks for your help yesterday. We couldn’t have done it without you._ **

**_If you’re interested in further contract work, text us back and we’ll provide you with the relevant information – even if you haven’t got the experience, you clearly have the expertise, and we could use that._ **

**_If you want to keep delivering pizzas… Enjoy this gift from us anyway._ **

**_-_ ** **♠**

 

 _Looks like Kingpin Ramsey’s changed his mind,_ Jeremy thinks to himself, and he wonders if Jack Pattillo had anything to do with that.

The big parcel is an Xbox One. The smaller one is _Borderlands: The Handsome Collection._

It turns out, he realises when he watches the news later, that Ryan wasn’t kidding when he mentioned making a lot of lives easier. Someone’s legitimised a whole bunch of name changes – previously denied, the logs ‘lost’ within the system – within Los Santos’ transgender community. There’s footage of women crying, clutching passports; men waving certificates and new licenses in the air emotionally. Non-binary and gender variant people looking very, very relieved.

Jeremy remembers the data he’d pulled from the bank that day, and thinks of Kdin; he rolls the idea of the Fake AH Crew, who look after their own with a passion so strong that they literally stitch each other back together, over in his mind.

 

**_Yeah, I’m in. -J_ **

 

Within minutes, he has co-ordinates sent directly to his cell phone.

He doesn’t know, when he leaves on the bike he usually delivers pizza on, that he’ll already have a new apartment to stay in, a new bed, a new laptop, new art supplies, all ready and waiting for him to move in. He doesn’t know he’s going to be presented with a friendship bracelet crafted from one of the taser barbs (Gavin’s idea; Michael has the matching one, and he wears it every day). He doesn’t know that Jack and Ryan are going to take him to be measured for suits next week.

What he _does_ know is the way there. Gavin and Ryan like pepperoni; Jack, Geoff, and Michael prefer meat feast toppings.

Jeremy’s never had a grand in his bank account before, and they’re all going to delight in seeing his reaction to the climbing funds, but on the ride over, he doesn’t know this. He just figures that Ryan’s finally making good on his promises of ‘owing him one’.

And –

not for the first time, either –

Jeremy turns out to be _entirely_ correct.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, y'all. I have loads more Jeremwood ideas to publish, so if you liked this, give the author subscription button a cheeky jab.
> 
> If you wanna chat, give me a shout on [tumblr](http://futureboy-ao3.tumblr.com/) and I'll happily talk about Jeremwood all day!! :0


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